Barnet Council Cabinet review Edgware Redevelopment and give the Barnet Tories a does of reality

 It's been an odd week for me, as regular readers will know. Digging up ancient memories from long ago. Monday, visiting the hospital where my Mum was treated for cancer, yesterday visiting a Barnet Council Cabinet meeting, where I made my name as a blogger, attracting national interest from press, TV and all sorts of other social media. I stopped going a decade ago, as the then Leader, Tory Richard Cornelius agreed with me that the Cabinet system did not work in local government, and abolished it. Labour had brought it in, under their previous administration in 1999. Whenthe Tories were run by Maoist style leaders sucha s Mike Freer, they loved it as it avoided public and council scrutiny. When Cornelius took over, he went back to a committee system. Whatever you may think of Cornelius, he was by far the most open and reasonable leader of Barnet Council. He believed in transparency and openness and would attend public meetings to put forward his case. As a result, he was shafted after he won a stunning victory, when Labour thought they had it in the bag, in 2018 and Dan Thomas, who was more in the Freer mold came in. The dodgy, secretive ways of time gone by started to come back. The first act, when Labour won, was to bring back the Cabinet system.

Since I last attended one of these, there's now a big row of tables, stuffed with council officers, all looking bored, playing with pencils and presumably getting overtime. This space used to be reserved for the public. You can see them all looking bored, behind me in this crafty selfie!

I've had np cause to visit the Cabinet since, but last night I had a question on the arts strategy. I turned up and the public gallery was full. The Edgware redevelopment was being discussed. The room was packed, I was eyed suspiciously by a security guard who challenged me as to my motives. When I explained, he opened the door. After the usual pleasantries, we had opposition questions. Three Tories made their way to the front. These were the Leader Peter Zinkin, The deputy Lucy Wakely and a third one, who I must confess I didn't know. Now I have to say that I actually like Peter and Lucy. They are decent people. Unlike the old guard of Freer, Thomas, Rams, Coleman, etc all have only ever been reasonable and decent to me. On the night when Labour won, in 2022 at the count, I saw Peter Zinkin looking dejected at loosing his seat. I bought him a cup of tea and we had a chat. Despite what people say, most councillors are actually decent people, who want to do well for their community. It is sad that the Barnet Tories became a repository for people with dodgy agendas after they won the council in 2002. The like of Coleman had a very bloated idea of their own self worth. A (long) spell in opposition will hopefully cure the local Tories of this tendancy. 

Peter Zinkin strode up and did his best to channel his inner anger at the beastlyness of Labour, who are " ignoring local people in Edgware and not consulting". Peter's trouble is he is a reasonable man. When greeted with reasonable replies from the likes of Ross Houston and Barry the Boss, he reverted to type and was reasonable and sensible. Lucy Wakely had a go and did no better. Ultimately, the redevelopment was the Tories baby under Dan Thomas. They know they are chancing their arm and I suspect that they didn't want to push their luck in front of a bunch of residents who were keen supporters. Labour made perfectly reasonable responses (something that never happened when the Tories had a cabinet, they were obnoxious to all, especially bloggers, so we wound them up no end. The meetings had packed public galleries, that would howl with derision). It all felt rather odd to me. 

I tweeted about the Tories Chutzpah in claiming they were good at consultations, Cllr Zinkin replied

We probably did less well at the beginning but over the years we learnt and by the start of work it was almost a continuous dialogue not always appreciated but fewer misunderstandings

— Peter Zinkin (@pzinkin) June 17, 2025

The main beef seemed to be that the public hadn't had a chance to comment or ask questions. I found this rather odd, as there was a committee item and a competent opposition would have tipped the Save Edgware Campaign off and given them a hand drafting some killer questions, had they been doing their job properly. It seemed a bit strange to me listening to the leader of the Barnet Tories moaning about the way public questions are handled, when they brought the rules in that made it difficult for the public to ask questions. I remember the good old days, when there were dozens. At one time, us bloggers would liaise and share our questions, just to make sure we got everything covered. It did us no good at all, the Tories took no notice, but it was jolly good fun watching them embarrass themselves, as they thought their clever antics in giving non answers were mightily clever. 

Another beef of Councillor Zinkin was lack of consultation. Barry the Boss pointed out that this process didn't begin until planning applications were being debated. Until that point there was 'nothing to debate' Councillor Zinkin stated that in the good old days of the Tories, consultations were done properly. For anyone familiar with One Barnet, this was hilarious. The judge found that Barnet hadn't consulted properly, but that we, the people, could do nothing about it, becase we'd been too late submitting our legal objection. The formula used to calculate the date meant that a perfectly good legal challenge to a very bad administration, failed as The Tories had, by luck or design, managed to string us all along so that we'd missed the date. Our contention that it was impossible to have submitted in the alloted period as it was not clear at the time that the consultation had been botched, sadly was ruled inadmissible. And here we were, ten years later, with the Tory Leader lecturing Labour on how to do good consultations. 

The Tories did make a couple of good point, perhaps the best was that putting a garage for electric buses, that have the habit of catching fire and exploding, under massive blocks of residential flats was a bad idea. Labour seemed to agree, which rather took the wind out of Cllr Zinkins sails. The current big bugbear of the Tories is that Labour are planning to give the developers £41 Million back from the Community Infrastructure levy.  Tory Hale Councillor Gurung posted this on Facebook earlier yesterday.

Barnet Labour Backs Developers Not Residents

Tonight, Barnet Council is being asked to approve a shocking proposal: to hand back £41 million of Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) funds to developers Ballymore and TfL money meant for local infrastructure, schools, and services.

Even more alarming, Ballymore admitted their Broadwalk development was financially unviable yet instead of holding them to account, Barnet’s Labour-run Council is working hand-in-hand with them to return money they were obliged to pay.

This is £41 million that should be invested in our community

not handed back to developers to meet infrastructure obligations they always had.

From the start, Barnet Labour has been on Ballymore’s side. This latest move proves it once again.

We deserve a council that stands up for residents not developers. As your local councillors in Edgware and Edgwarebury we will always stand up for our residents.

I had a word with my mole in the Labour Cabinet before the meeting. I asked about this. They told me they couldn't possibly discuss the matter,given its commercially sensitive nature. I then explained that the Tories were giving them a public pasting and they really should, maybe not to me right now, but as soon as they possibly could. To my surprise, I got a full answer at this point. There are strict rules that govern such things, and the council legally has to repay the money. Keeping it and telling Ballymore to sod off, would simply mean Ballymore would sue Barnet, who would lose, have to pay the £41 million, as well as compensation and damages. Oh yes, and the Tories know this (or they should if they have done their job) and are simply making mischief. As to the development being 'not financially viable', this was simply the fault of the Tories who'd done such a rubbish job drawing up the SPD and now Labour were having to sort it all out and Edgware residents were truly lucky to have such a wonderful Labour Council, even though they'd elected useless Tory Councillors. I was then told all of this was priviliged information and if I said I word of this to anyone, I'd be locked up in Gaol for six months for breaking the local government act.

After three seconds deliberation, I decided to share this with you all. If I get sent to the slammer, I expect protest on the streets of Barnet. A free pot noodle for the first reader to guess which cabinet member broke the rules of the Papal Conclave The Local Government Act. 

They say that history repeats itself. Once as tragedy and once as farce. That certainly seems true of the Cabinet system at Barnet Council. If ever you've wondered how I feel blogging about Barnet Council, Tories and Labour, read the Greek myth of Sisiphyus. 

How Much? Barnet Council wasting money on staff to post pointless tweets & Facebook posts

Yesterday, I wrote this blog about how Barnet Council, who have just had a £55 Million baleout from the Government are wasting your money. I didn't post it as Tuesday is food blog day. Today, just as I was about to post it. To my amazement, I saw this post

Don’t forget to bring your photo ID if you are voting at a polling station in the Finchley Church End by-election on Thursday 6 March 2025.

If a voter does not have suitable voter ID, they can apply for one here https://t.co/qt1M4alvde by Wednesday 26 February 2025 at 5pm.

— Barnet Council (@BarnetCouncil) February 25, 2025

Now, for once, it was a useful, sensible tweet, with an important message that directly affects Barnet voters in the forthcoming Barnet By Election. All good? Well not really. Anyone who knows anything about Social media (such as Barnet Council's paid staff) should know that a single post is nowhere near enough. They should have been tweeting this message out ever since the Byelection was announced. They should have been asking us to retweet it and let our friends know. I would have amplified this message more if I'd seen it earlier. What is shocking is that our local parties have not retweeted it. Anyway, on with the text I'd written. I think this rather amplifies the point though........

On Monday,  Barnet Council posted this tweet. A council that has just applied for a £55 Bale out wants to give away money for a Festival of Architecture. I am sorry to say, but if I was going to pick any London Borough to celebrate in the London Festival of Architecture, Barnet would be the last one. The list of buildings of note that we've lost in the last 20 years is something beyond comprehension. A few iconic ones? The National Institute for Medical Research (replaced with a bad Barratts knock off copy). The National Newspaper Library in Mill Hill. Countless interesting pubs,  houses, shops etc have been gutted, demolished and ruined. And the new buildings. Anonymous, dull structures in Colindale, etc. 

So this is what they tweeted. 

Last chance to apply for the Community Fund! Applications close TOMORROW. Grants of £250 to £500 available for your event at the London Festival of Architecture. https://t.co/sM7WgSXHR3 #LFA2025 #VoicesInArchitecture #LFAFestivalVoices #LFA2025Voices pic.twitter.com/G7fCp0WBwl

— Barnet Council (@BarnetCouncil) February 24, 2025

This was also posted to Facebook. .

It's bad enough that they are doling money out, but they are paying staff to do this. As best I could see, this was the only social media post on Monday. 

I've been monitoring Barnet Council tweets etc for a while. I was interested to find out how much effort they were putting into their tweeting and what sort of response they were getting. FYI when I looked on Monday, the tweet above had around 300 views and no engagement. I sent an FoI request and got this answer

Thank you for your request received on 9 January 2025, for the following information: 1. Details of the number of members of staff engaged on maintaining Barnet Council social media accounts 2. The average number of hours that these members of staff spend per day on social media accounts for the last month where figures are readily available 3. If available, the time spent by platform 4. Any targets etc that staff may have for numbers of posts etc We have processed this request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. 

Response I am writing to inform you that we have searched our records and although we hold some of the information requested, some of the information you requested is not held by London Borough of Barnet. We have provided answers to your request below. 

1. Details of the number of members of staff engaged on maintaining Barnet Council social media accounts 1 X News & Social Media Manager, 2 X News & Social Media Officers 

2. The average number of hours that these members of staff spend per day on social media accounts for the last month where figures are readily available Rotates between the team 2-3 hours per working day for the individual on duty 

3. If available, the time spent by platform Information not recorded 

4. Any targets etc that staff may have for numbers of posts etc No targets for posts; annual evaluation assesses posts' performance with reach and engagement metrics

So to produce these tweets etc takes 2-3 hours a day. There is no monitoring of what the staff do and no targets. I wrote to Barry Rawlings, leader of the council and the Tory opposition leader, Peter Zinkin. I got no response from Cllr Rawlings. 

Here is the email I sent.

Dear Councillors

 

FYI  - Do you think this is a sensible usage of council resources? Are you happy with the way the success of engagement is being evaluated.

A few observations. The council's twitter feed has a following of approx 35K accounts. Many will be news organisations etc. This represents less than 10% of Barnets population. As best I can tell, posts get an average of around 300 view, which is less than 0.1 of the population. The recent Holocaust memorial being an outlier with 11K views, but still only acheived 11 likes and 4 retweets. 

 

To me, this looks like a very ineffective use of resources.

Here is Councillor Zinkins response (that i it in it's entirity)

as you say almost a complete waste of time

Regards

Cllr Peter Zinkin

I have long found Councillor Zinkin to be one of the more sensible and approachable Tory members. Although brief, his response does seem to confirm this assessment. 

These officers also post on the Barnet Council website. The news section has 1-2 posts a week on average. They also produce a weekly newsletter called Barnet First, which allededly has 45,000 subscribers. This means approx 15% of the people who live in the Borough subscribe. Most of the stories appear in several editions and are generally a rehash of the stories in the news section. You can see the newsletters here and sign up (I'd urge all Barnet residents to do this, you are paying for it!).

Given that there are a full time team of two staff and a manager doing all this, I can only say that it is appalling. The home page is as bland and dull as possible. There are no previews of what is in the newsletters on the homepage, which is also difficult to find. The actual Newsletters are laid out in the most boring way possible. There is no attempt at all to engage with the audience, no "What's in this edition" at the top. No thought given to what might encourage readers to read the whole thing. 

To sum up. I'm all for engagement with the public. I'm all for putting information out there on social media. What I am not all for is wasting taxpayers money in a totally incompetent way. Do it properly or don't do it. On Monday, I wrote a slightly tongue in cheek blog about Elon Musk and DOGE. I am sure Mr Musk would have something to say about this, if he were interested in Barnet. 

At last - Barnet Tories admits that it got the Capita Contract wrong

 Ok, first a confession. I know nasty Barnet bloggers are not meant to say things like this, but I'm starting to like Peter Zinkin, chair of the Barnet Finance, Performance and Contracts committee. I've dealt with quite a few Barnet Tories over the years. Some, such as Mike Freer, Dan Thomas, Brian Coleman, Robert Rams and Reuben Thompstone are aloof, condescending and lack respect for the public. Some are ok, pleasant, treat the public with respect and you can have a chat with them after as normal human beings. I'd include Brian and Kate Salinger, Richard Cornelius, John Hart, Hugh Rayner and Sachin Rajput in this list. It's nothing to do with their personal politics, its just an observation as to how they treat the public in their role as a councillor. I have to add Peter Zinkin to the second list. Unlike John Hart, I've not had a cheeky pint in the Bridge, swapping jokes, but he takes his job seriously and is respectful to the public as committee chair. Myself and John Dix asked questions of the committee and I have to confess, both John and I got straight and candid answers to several questions. 

I asked two questions, on agenda items 7 (Capita Contract) and 8 (Chief Financial Officers report). The way the committee works, is that they provide a written answer and then you get the chance to ask a question on the agenda item. A maximum of two question are permitted and the questions can be no more than 100 words long. At the meeting, you are allowed to ask a follow up question if you are not satisfied. There used to be no limit, with just a 30 minute time limit on the questions. 

I was first up and I thought I'd push my luck a bit. As I detailed in this blog, I was very upset at the late publication of the reports. This meant that it was impossible to properly review them, One report missed the deadline for questions altogether. It is unacceptable. I started by stating that I thought it was unacceptable and that the council should have a mechanism for dealing with questions when reports are late. Strictly speaking, this question was out of order, but Councillor Zinkin not only accepted the observation, but agreed with the Labour group leader Barry Rawlings that this should be raised with the Constitution committee so that a proper mechanism for dealing with this scenario could be introduced. 

I have to admit, I was surprised. It is rare for anything a blogger says in Council to be accepted, but it was most welcome. I realised that I might not have quite as frustrating evening as I expected. Next up, I asked a question about the Capita contract extension. I read the final sentance of the answer out. "As stated in the report, the financial and commercial elements are complex and further work is required to ensure that any recommendations are based on a sound understanding of the cost and budget position." 

I aked  whether the Barnet client side organisation was "too thin". For those unfamiliar with council speak, this means that there are not enough qualified people montoring Capita. Councillor Zinkin shocked me with his answer. He admitted that big mistakes were made in 2014 when the contract was set up and yes, the Council team was too thin to do its job, meaning that Capita had got away with murder (not his words). Of course, now everything was fine and dandy and the fact that the deadline for renewing the contract had been missed was nothing to do with lack of resources and the fact that it wouldn't be done until after the election (something I'd suggested was a time bomb for the incoming adinistration) was purely because they were doing such a good job. Councillor Zinkin suggested that he was surprised I could make the "Time Bomb" accusation and that this was most unfair. I replied that they've known the timescales since the contract was signed and had plenty of time. I am not sure whether the fact that renewal has been pushed until after the election is a happy coincidence or a clever political ploy by The Tories. All I know is that it is very handy for them. It would be nice if Labour state that the delay will give a chance to do a proper review and being services in house if this will save money. I don't expect this to happen. 

We moved on to Item 8, the CFO's report. It gave me a chance to raise the fact that a single question of less than 100 words makes scrutiny impossible. I admitted I'd misunderstood the wording of the report, but pointed out that the late submission meant there was little time to read the report and cross reference with other reports, as Councillor Zinkin suggested. I stated that the report should give details of costs of slippages. Councillor Zinkin suggested that this info was detailed elsewhere. He also made the offer of the opportunity to go through the reports with a Council Officer. I will be contacting Mr Reasonable to see if he would participate. To be honest, his input would be invaluable and would massively improve scrutiny. In all my time attending meetings, this was the first time such an offer has been made and it is hopefully a sign that after a decade of hostility to the public, we are entering a new era. It will be very interesting to see how this progresses, whoever wins.

Next up, we had Mr Reasonable with three questions. He started by informing Councillor Zinkin that he agreed with me. Project slippage had inherent costs. These needed to be accounted for. John works on large infrastructure projects and understands that interest and finance costs need to be monitored if things are slipping, which they clearly are.

He'd done one of his usual insightful blogs on Monday, detailing how Capita were not providing value for money to Barnet residents. His first question, on the Capita report was a simple one. Would the Barnet Tories please stop making claims about savings, when they are unprepared to provide any evidence to back these claims up. I'm not sure whether Councillor Zinkin agreed or just sympathised. I've listened a couple of times and I'm not entirely sure.

The next two questions concerned the Brent Cross West station development. I had a chat with John before the meeting about this. We share a view that it is right and proper that a station is built. We also have no problem that the council is helping to finance it. His problem (and I agree 100%) is that the council is funding it, taking 100% of the risk, but will share the profits (if any ever arrive) with the developers of Brent Cross. This is absolutely bonkers. When the project was conceived, the world was different, people actually used trains to go to their office every day. I suspect that whatever happens, it will be a long time before such things happen and there is a healthy income stream. However, if the UK is to deal with the challenges of climate change, we need to maximise public transport usage. This means projects like this. John was keen to see the risk properly assessed and included in the council's accounts. There was a degree of acknowledgement that this was a good point. We will see if it is actually actions these.

I stayed for the Capita report. Labour asked for disclosure of various figures, so the public could be informed going into the elections. A vote was held and the Tories rejected the proposal on the chair's casting vote. There was also a dispute when a Labour Councillor read an FoI response that named and shamed a council officer. Councillor Zinkin was enraged. He stated that he did not want councillors demonising officers in his committee. Labour Leader Barry Rawlings (who since I last saw him has grown a huge beard and looks like Santa Clause, without a red suite though) stated that as it was an FOI repsonse, it was in the public domain. I often think the Council would be a better place without political parties. Most of the councillors are reasonable human beings. They are forced to put their hands up all of the time to pass motions they disagree with. You can always tell when they are doing this as they refuse to make eye contact. I'm not sure what they really think they are achieving (beyond preservation of jobs and allowances for themselves). I find it frustration. The council would work so much better if it was open and transparent. This happens in the USA where all public contracts are fully published. I don't buy the concept of confidentiality in commercial contracts. I'd like to see it all published. That way competetors would know where they went wrong and try and be more competetive. I understand that many aspects of what the council do (social work, etc) should be private, but there is no excuse for hiding how money is spent. 

I recorded the question time for posterity. If you are interested in these discussions, there are some rather interesting points in there. The Barnet Eye was the first blog to video a Council meeting. Sadly, since the demise of Dan Hope, people don't bother so much. It is a shame, as we really should care. The decisions made in Council affect how much tax you pay, how well your roads are fixed, how your children's schools are run, whether stations are built, how you will be treated in social care if you need it. I could go on. Councillors get paid a minimum of over £10,000 a year to attend these meetings. You pay that, surely you should care what they do?

One interesting thing. As I was leaving, I was approached by the Council officer who was the author of one of the late reports. They explained that the report was ready on time, they take great pride in getting reports produced promptly, but was withheld as it was also relevant to another meeting and was released after this meeting had been held. They were at pains to insist that nothing was untoward. I take that very much at face value, but as the council agreed, in such circumstances, there should be a formal process for delaying the deadline for questions.